nooj wrote:I think there is a significant gap between listening to the Bible and improving listening comprehension for native material and native speakers.
Imagine for example that French was a language that had lots of native material but no intermediary, let alone beginner listening comprehension tools. No audiobooks, no subtitles, no scripts, no tapes, no CDs accompanying the textbook (or if there are, very few and hard to get). Sure, the Bible is a good place to start, but I want to know what you would do after that. How do you move on from the Bible so that you can be ready for a conversation of 3-4 native speakers in a bar or be able to watch and understand a French movie that uses contemporary, colloquial language?
Audiobooks (including the Bible one) surely are in the category of native material, aren't they? And once you have that initial listening comprehension boost you just go and listen to native material (of various difficulty) and develop it further. It's totally doable without learner's beginner or intermediary (or advanced) audio. Understanding everyday speech or TV series or anything like that is going to take time and effort, but it's not impossible. You could listen to authentic (not learner's) podcasts and radio. You could watch Youtube clips: vlogs and tutorials on various subjects, Let's Plays and commentaries, educational materials (physics, maths, history, whatever), comedy skits, choose the type of material that is interesting to you and makes you engaged and go with it. That's what I actually do (after the audiobooks). And then after I feel bold enough and more confident in my listening skills I just watch some long TV series until I learn to understand them.